Musk's Confessions: I'm not a liar or a fool

Elon Musk said he thought he would be able to take it lightly in response to criticism from others. But after years of battling with the rest of the auto industry and legions of skeptics on Wall Street, the Tesla CEO's frustration was hard to contain.

Nearly 10 years ago, Tesla introduced the Model S, proving that electric cars can compete with the best fuel cars in style and performance. Four years ago, model 3 introduced this technology to the wider market. Over the years, Musk has not only had to go almost single-handedly to build an electric car market, but also waged a protracted battle with wall Street short sellers and began to clash with regulators.

This year, from Ford to Volkswagen to Mercedes-Benz, many companies have made clear commitments to develop electric vehicles in the future, which proves Musk's correctness to some extent. On Tuesday, Toyota announced a $35 billion investment in electric vehicles. Musk said: "For a long time, other companies in the automotive industry have basically called Tesla and me fools and liars. They say the idea of an electric car won't work, and you can't achieve your range and performance goals. Even if you do, no one will buy it. ”

Musk believes climate change activists are helping to push automakers to adopt more sustainable technologies. But he claims that a big reason they're finally ready to move to electric vehicles is that "they won't react until we start taking market share from them in a meaningful way."

He is far from the only one who holds this view. Bob Lutz, former vice chairman of GM and former president of Chrysler, had expressed skepticism about Tesla's chances of survival, and now he calls Musk's impact on the auto industry "unbelievable." Lutz said of Tesla's progress even in the European luxury car market: "That's why Mercedes-Benz and BMW are so afraid of him."

This year, Elon Musk has been almost everywhere, and it's not just the way he does things that has made him one of the most influential (but controversial) business figures of recent years. Musk, who has 66.3 million followers, used his hyperactive Twitter account to promote Dogecoin and continue to fight regulators including the SEC.

While nearly 800,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, Musk, 50, has consistently slammed the restrictions during the pandemic, as well as politicians who accuse him of not paying enough taxes. Even many of its most loyal supporters acknowledge that there is some hype about Tesla. During the stock market boom, the company's valuation hit the $1 trillion mark this year, making Musk the richest man in the world, even though global electric car shipments are less than 2 percent.

Yet behind the clamor, speculation frenzy and blatant contempt for the rules, Musk has achieved astonishing results. The Financial Times named Musk "Person of the Year" for triggering a historic shift from the global automotive industry to electric vehicles. Even if Tesla somehow goes out of business next year, Musk will change one of the world's most important industries, with potentially far-reaching implications for governments, investors and the climate.

In an era that is often defined by new technologies, Musk claims to be the most innovative entrepreneur of his generation. The results of Musk's unusual spirit of adventure and extreme challenges are not limited to cars. Last year, his private space company, SpaceX, brought human spaceflight back to the United States for the first time since the space shuttle. Its Starlink network is about to launch the world's first commercial satellite broadband service, and Starship is waiting for its first orbital test flight, which could change the economic landscape into orbit.

So, does Musk think the set goal he set for Tesla 15 years ago to lead the transportation revolution has finally been achieved? He replied: "At least I am encouraged by what they (other automakers) say. What we do at Tesla is not because we think it will bring profits, but to prove that it can achieve its goals. "Maybe so, but it's already achieving amazing financial results. Tesla has struggled to prove itself financially viable for years, but its profit margins have proven to be surprisingly strong, and many investors are willing to bet that it will lead a new large global electric self-driving auto industry.

Musk has come under much criticism at a time when tech experts and billionaires are increasingly the object of populist distrust, but still enjoys a higher level of public acceptance than many. This may be partly because his personal brand has become intertwined with pop culture influenced by memes and games. Musk believes that this is because his products are designed to meet people's wishes. "I just want people to go to Mars, use StarLink to achieve freedom of information, use Tesla to accelerate sustainable development technology, and liberate people from the hard work of driving," he said.

His quest for boundaries and his quest for controversy got him into trouble. Tesla is under investigation by U.S. traffic safety and securities regulators into the safety of its driver-assisted technology and whether its solar panels hide the risk of fire. Musk's outspokenness on Twitter sparked a regulatory complaint that forced him to resign as Tesla's chairman, and his lashing out at critics and mockery of regulators has even made many of his admirers lose patience.

Musk's impact on the global automotive industry has been going on for a long time. He had early success as one of the founders of PayPal, with the South African-born serial entrepreneur first investing in Tesla and becoming its chairman shortly after Tesla was founded in 2004.

Before Tesla, Lutz said, GM engineers didn't even believe that the lithium-ion batteries used in laptops would generate enough power to power the car. He added that Tesla's first car, the Roadster, finally convinced them and launched the Chevrolet Volt hybrid directly 10 years ago. But GM didn't follow through. Daimler and Toyota also seem to see the dawn of an electric future, working with Tesla on the eve of its 2010 listing to leverage its electric drive technology while providing much-needed capital injections. But the league didn't last long.

"They're not taking electric cars seriously, and it's clear that they're just trying to produce as few electric vehicles as they think are necessary to meet regulatory requirements," Musk said. Analysts say proving that electric vehicles are profitable means subverting almost all the accepted wisdom of the industry, from how supply chains operate to how they reach consumers. Musk is told every time that "this is not true" and "this is impossible." But he never gave up.

Laurie Yoler, an early Tesla board member, also praised Musk for his vision from scratch and his perseverance to stay the course. "He's not afraid of people saying he's crazy, a lot of people say they start with basic principles, but they're just taking it step by step," she said. He really focused on the greatest ideas. ”

Musk's explanation for Tesla's success is his passion for engineering. "People I haven't worked with don't understand that I'm an engineer first and foremost," he says. Other companies have far more resources and money than I am, how did Tesla and SpaceX succeed? The problem is that they can't hire me. He also said a commitment to engineering excellence and focusing on important challenges are key to attracting top engineering talent.

Musk said he spends 7 days a week, 80-90 hours a week switching back and forth between Tesla and SpaceX's most critical projects. "I'm not trying to micromanage arbitrarily," he said. I'm actually involved in diversion: what's the most useful thing I can do? I'm very good at technology and engineering. Everyone has their own talents, and that's my talent. I can't sing or dance, but I can engineer technology. ”

Despite his huge fortune and the fact that he cashed out $13 billion worth of Tesla stock over the past month, Musk said he didn't have a house, no yacht and no vacation. He said: "I don't think there's going to be a lot of people who really want to swap places. As long as I can work, my goal is to work, be productive and contribute, it's in my nature. I also want to do less work, which is great. ”

Musk's overall management style, as well as the pressure he puts on his employees to compete over issues, has its drawbacks. People he worked with described how he created chaos and chaos. A former supply chain executive said Musk's management style has led to a high turnover rate of employees, which means that tesla must re-learn the same lessons every time a new model is launched. Another former executive said Musk often made quick decisions to let the engineering team deal with new problems, but then changed direction and canceled all work.

Ferragu said such complaints were irrelevant. He said that while Musk has done a lot of things wrong, constantly pushing the limits of what's possible means he'll make important breakthroughs ahead of others. He "knows where the bottleneck is and knows he has to push his employees to the max."

Musk said it was a big difference between him and Jeff Bezos, Whose own space company, Blue Origin, has fallen behind SpaceX. He praised Bezos for his "pretty good engineering talent," before adding: "But he doesn't seem willing to put in the details of the project." And the details often make or break. ”

Musk added that Bezos "really took himself a little too seriously." I'm trying to inspire him to spend more time on Blue Origin so they can make more progress. Like a friend of mine said, he should spend more time at Blue Origin and less time in the hot shower. ”

Pushing the limits of technology means that Musk's company is always in trouble even now. Tesla is trying to put a challenging new battery technology into production, and the company has failed to achieve its plans to launch a large electric truck, a new model of the original Roadster and a Cyberruck electric pickup truck. In addition, there are some extremely difficult technical challenges that even Musk sometimes doubts himself, including building a fully reusable starship and perfecting the technology that Musk has been claiming for years to be coming up with self-driving technology. These two events, he said, accounted for the "greatest cognitive load" in his life.

Speaking about Starship, Musk said: "I believe we don't need new physics, it's just an extremely difficult technical problem. But I sometimes wonder, is humanity really capable of doing this? I know it can be done, but there's still a lot to do. ”

Recently, he has been trying to prepare SpaceX employees for a tough road, writing to employees that SpaceX's future is not guaranteed. He said many people in the company had never experienced a failed rocket launch. He also outlined how SpaceX would be in financial trouble if it couldn't produce the engines needed to meet its Starship launch program and couldn't send enough Starlink satellites into orbit. Musk said: "Bankruptcy is not impossible. Therefore, we should not be complacent or self-righteous. ”

Meanwhile, in the face of the challenge of autonomous driving, he almost admits that some of his previous confidences were wrong, "I don't think we need to solve a significant part of AI to make it work." But he added that he now has "99.9 percent confidence that full self-driving will work, and it's only a matter of time."

In the eyes of critics, Musk's years of false assurances that Tesla's cars are on full self-driving suggest that the executive tends to exaggerate the capabilities of his own cars. So, is he misleading Tesla's customers about self-driving technology, posing a potential risk to their safety?

He said simply, "I didn't." When ordering a Tesla, read the instructions above. When you open it, see what is written on it. That's very, very clear. Given Tesla's high safety ratings and NASA's willingness to entrust its astronauts to SpaceX's rockets, he added: "I don't think there's a CEO on this planet who cares more about security than I do."

He was also annoyed that someone criticized his predictions as sometimes overly optimistic. He complained: "The predictions I made came true, or I was ahead of schedule, but they didn't get attention, and the predictions I made were late and got a lot of attention." As an example of the former, he said, the company's giant battery factory in Nevada "far exceeded expectations" and that Tesla Model S vehicles produced more than twice as much as expected at the time of the IPO.

One sign of Musk's success is that there is finally real competition in the electric car space. Rival Rivian has already unveiled its own electric pickup, and Ford will also launch an electric version of its F-150 in the spring. Musk doesn't sound worried about new competition and predicts that companies like Volkswagen and Ford will succeed in the electric car space, though he warns that Rivian is facing the same painful and contagious efforts as Tesla to achieve mass production.